Downtown bank owners envision bigger back patio, walking path

An exterior photo of the former Citizens National Bank building on West Main Avenue in Gastonia, which is undergoing a major redevelopment. [Mike Hensdill/The Gaston Gazette]▲

Jim Morasso, left, and his partner Tom Cox survey the top floor where there once was a skylight and soon will be again as redevelopment continues on the former Citizens National Bank building on West Main Avenue in Gastonia. [Mike Hensdill/The Gaston Gazette]▲

A sweeping plan to redevelop a former bank in downtown Gastonia doesn’t just call for upgrading the interior.

The new owners of the property at 212 W. Main Ave. have also begun the process of buying a sliver of land along the north side of the bank from the city of Gastonia. Their goal is to incorporate it into a back patio for the upscale restaurant that will eventually fill the ground level. It will also be used to construct a walkable path that can be extended along other businesses that back up to the Rotary Centennial Pavilion.

“Our desire is to make that sort of a walking mall and street, like Main Avenue,” said Jim Morasso. “It’ll almost be like a little citizen pathway.”

Morasso, who owns Webb Custom Kitchen a block away on South Street, teamed with fellow downtown business and property owner Tom Cox to buy the four-level Citizens National Bank buildings from the city earlier this year. They plan to call their first-floor restaurant The Fed, paying tribute to the bank’s presence for several decades after it was built downtown in 1920.

Cox said they envision turning the basement into a type of jazz club and wine bar called the Night Repository. The top two floors will host a 4,800-square-foot Thermador cooking and wine demonstration center with classrooms and teaching areas, as well as an art gallery, art studios and live/work spaces for working artists.

The city still owns a roughly 3,200-square-foot wedge of real estate that sits between the bank and the parking lot near the Rotary Pavilion. Cox and Morasso see a benefit in buying that and using it to enhance what they’re doing downtown.

They have offered $1,200 for the land, which City Councilman Dave Kirlin said the city couldn’t really argue against.

“We know (selling it) will enhance the property, it will enhance the tax value of the property,” he said. “And essentially it’s property being maintained by the city at a cost to the city, so we couldn’t quite differ on the purchase price offer, because we figure that’s found money to us.”

After City Council members unanimously accepted the offer Tuesday, it will now go through an upset bid process open to any other willing buyers of the land.

Morasso and Cox envision the walking path they plan to create as eventually winding farther east toward a boutique hotel that is being developed in the historic Lawyers Building. They say what they plan behind their own building alone will be worthwhile to the community.

“We are quadrupling our investment in that back patio,” said Cox. “We’ll have full outdoor covered dining with a timber-framed pergola. It will be a big patio center designed to go with a walkable street.”

You can reach Michael Barrett at 704-869-1826 or on Twitter @GazetteMike.

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